O/S Daily Friday September26 2025

YorksLass

Morning all and thanks @Scarlet (and @Gers!) for today's thread.  Today we can expect a sunny day with occasional cloudy spells and a light breeze but no rain and slightly milder overnight temperatures.  The nights seem to be drawing in much quicker of late, so any/all sunny days are gratefully received!  

My parcel arrived yesterday afternoon and I now have a piece of metal artwork (two stems of laurel leaves in autumnal colours) hanging on my living room wall.  When you order things online it's always tricky to imagine if the product is going to be as you imagine it will be; in this case it's much nicer than I expected and I'm very pleased with it.  After that I did the required online banking registration for when my credit card migrates to its new home next week, fingers crossed there are no hitches.   

Today it's the usual Friday admin for me plus a walk to the Co-op for a few bits and pieces, other than that my time is my own to do as I wish.  The To Do list of what I need or want to do (in addition to the usual day to day stuff) is growing again so I should might tackle something from that.    Fish for tea followed by a sponge pud with chocolate sauce.

@remmie - Good luck for tomorrow.  Those of us who've been there/done that know just how you will be feeling.  Hugs. X

@Gers - Oh dear, I hope you have a good stock of tissues!  Take care and don't be overdoing it.

@camelot - Fingers crossed the gas engineer can work his magic, it's never a good time of year to be without heating or hot water but especially as winter approaches. 

@TA - Welcome home, ease yourself back into the routine gently.  Yes, I did have a bit of a sniffle at the end of All Creatures - I'm a soppy old thing!  

@Chrisca - Enjoy your weekend in London.  

Take care all, especially the poorly ones, and have a good weekend.  X

Topher

Hi there, I’ve been following (lurking) for a while now, and wonder if I can join in the conversation. I’ve had a day of visiting the strands of my life that today look as if we’re near their end. I’m selling my Mum’s house to raise funds for her care home fees as her savings are now too low. The house went up for sale a year ago after I’d roped in family to work really hard on cleaning, clearing and gardening to prep it to its best advantage. It sold earlier this year which set off a comedy of errors including me accepting an offer at a nearly 20% reduction of the original asking price (on the estate agent’s advice as it had been “on the market for so long” (8 weeks). The people who beat me down on the price then had the cheek to ask us to leave certain pieces of furniture they’d fancied - no thanks ducky-boo  (I put the furniture into an auction) - the buyers then turned out to have been a bit too ambitious about their own property’s value and their ability to buy Mum’s. Also their “surveyor” (the one who left the heating on full for two weeks) turned out to have just been a friend of the buyer, not qualified in surveying - he put up a challenging query about installation certification for the log stove - (it was a coal effect gas fire in the shape of a stove with an installation date that preceded the new certification he was mistakenly demanding) then the estate agent went bust. By this time, the garden had turned back into a jungle. So we started again with a new estate agent, forked out A LOT of money for a gardening company to strip it all down, (they may have cost a lot, but they were soooo worth it) had photos done, an auction of contents that might be of value, had gas boilers serviced and certified and put it on the market again, having wasted the best part of the year on the doomed sale. Within 1 week of it going up, we’ve had an offer and it was back to much nearer the original asking price…. On to those strands …..

Today I went up to check on Mum’s house, collected loads of conkers for a Nancy Birtwhistle experiment on creating laundry soap from them, as well as using them for spider reduction at home. Picked all Mum’s quinces (I’m fairly clueless about this, September is supposed to be too early but they were yellow and I’m researching how to ripen them at home). Cut some Lavendar that the gardeners had managed to leave me - this will be Lavendar wands, maybe trying to root a cutting, and some Lavendar seeds saved for bags. Found some secateurs that are flimsier than mine, but in better condition, checked that the (qualified) surveyor had left everything as it ought to be. The house still needs a final empty which will be a bit of a headache, but nearly there.

Strand two was a final blood test of a round of health tests I’ve been doing since March, this one is just to see if my iron levels have responded to my concerted efforts, all the other tests have been summarised by my GP and “we have a plan”. I think my ears are the only orifices that haven’t been host to specialised equipment this year. The anaemia explains why I’ve been so feeble for the past twelve months. 

Strand three is sorting Mum’s care and deferred payment loan for same and I’ve given all the input I can and am just awaiting results. Her care home is a small business so I hate that we’re owing them. 

Strand four is “taming” the finances, which again, is nearly in hand. My grocery budget still leaves something to be desired but I’ve noticed from the lack of refuse in the various bins, that my cooking from scratch regime has had an effect on the reduction of stuff we throw away. (I don’t mean my cooking was previously so bad that we filled the bins, but rather we’re buying much less stuff that comes in plastics). 

Stand Five - decluttering: I’ve taken all the charity shop worthy stuff, (bear in mind this was on my Mum’s house’s behalf as well as my own) I still have a category to dispose of, this is the 1940’s life that we used to lead, Bakelite radio, Bakelite telephone, clothing, accessories, books, household equipment and a CC41 Kitchen larder cabinet. I can’t quite load it onto a non specialist charity shop. Acme whistle and hairnet anyone? 

My DD and DS ‘s lives have also settled down into a nice groove financially, emotionally and with some levels of security. 

Usually when I think it’s time to bring things down a notch, something rears its head, but I could do with a bit of an even keel for a while now. DH’s mental health ain’t great but we know where we stand for now. 

There are a couple of strands unmentioned here, but I’ll save those as this post is already way too long

Best wishes to all.

Floss

Topher said:

Stand Five - decluttering: I’ve taken all the charity shop worthy stuff, (bear in mind this was on my Mum’s house’s behalf as well as my own) I still have a category to dispose of, this is the 1940’s life that we used to lead, Bakelite radio, Bakelite telephone, clothing, accessories, books, household equipment and a CC41 Kitchen larder cabinet. I can’t quite load it onto a non specialist charity shop. Acme whistle and hairnet anyone?.

Would they be better passed onto a specialist vintage dealer?

weenancyinAmerica

Topher - can you also check with World War II museums like Eden Camp and even with the Imperial War Museum to see if the items could be used in their displays? The York Castle Museum also does displays in everyday things that people have used in the past. You may even have a museum near you that could use some of the items. Several people on this Forum collect the 40s items and might have places to recommend also (especially over on Fashion on the Ration). The Museum of Brands in London  is often interested in paper memorabilia.

Topher

Floss said:

Topher said:

Stand Five - decluttering: I’ve taken all the charity shop worthy stuff, (bear in mind this was on my Mum’s house’s behalf as well as my own) I still have a category to dispose of, this is the 1940’s life that we used to lead, Bakelite radio, Bakelite telephone, clothing, accessories, books, household equipment and a CC41 Kitchen larder cabinet. I can’t quite load it onto a non specialist charity shop. Acme whistle and hairnet anyone?.

Would they be better passed onto a specialist vintage dealer?

They would, trouble is, as I learned from looking around for an auctioneer for Mum’s stuff, we’re in a bit of a Specialist Dealer’s desert where I live. The scene has changed since Covid, we used to know a lot of re-enactor groups for 1940s, but they too haven’t been as vibrant as pre Covid. 

Topher

weenancyinAmerica said:

Topher - can you also check with World War II museums like Eden Camp and even with the Imperial War Museum to see if the items could be used in their displays? The York Castle Museum also does displays in everyday things that people have used in the past. You may even have a museum near you that could use some of the items. Several people on this Forum collect the 40s items and might have places to recommend also (especially over on Fashion on the Ration). The Museum of Brands in London  is often interested in paper memorabilia.

Thanks. I’ve previously contacted Imperial War Museum North - that was about another of my strands, I became curator of my grandfather’s cousins “stuff”. She’d been an ambulance driver in Liverpool during WW2 so I have a large box of photo albums of her ambulance crew days, newspaper cuttings (mainly of her marriage to the Crew’s captain), but also letters and objects from her life, including a series of letters from her father away from home in WW1 which culminate in a black lined envelope containing a letter notifying her mother of his death, literally the evening before the end day of the war when she was a child (it really is evocative going through them). There are dance cards and souvenirs, an “acrostic and hand made folding puzzle message from a former boyfriend followed by a photo and notification to her by his parents of his death. There are her fur coats made by Cripps of Liverpool (“famous” for being a Time Slip location) that she wore for her wedding a report of which appeared in the Liverpool echo (newspaper clippings also in the collection) However neither Imperial war Museum, nor the museum of Liverpool are taking donations, I guess there must be a flood of such stories and artefacts. So as for my stuff, I’m still storing/hoarding it. - I hadn’t thought of the Castle Museum or Eden camp though.